Adam
Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a
prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and
his relationship to art. What is actual when our experiences are mediated by
language, technology, medication, and the arts? Is poetry an essential art
form, or merely a screen for the reader’s projections? Instead of following the
dictates of his fellowship, Adam’s “research” becomes a meditation on the
possibility of the genuine in the arts and beyond: are his relationships with
the people he meets in Spain as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? A witness
to the 2004 Madrid train bombings and their aftermath, does he participate in
historic events or merely watch them pass him by?

In
prose that veers between the comic and tragic, the self-contemptuous and the
inspired, Leaving the Atocha Station is a portrait of the artist as a
young man in an age of Google searches, pharmaceuticals, and spectacle.

Download and start listening now!

b4up

Quotes & Awards

“Hilarious and cracklingly intelligent.”

Jonathan Franzen

“A subtle, sinuous, and very funny first novel.”

New Yorker

“A marvelous novel, not least because of the magical way that it reverses the postmodernist spell, transmuting a fraudulent figure into a fully dimensional and compelling character.”

Wall Street Journal

“A noteworthy debut…Lerner succeeds in drawing out the problems inherent in art, expectation, and communication.”

Publishers Weekly

Finalist for the 2011 Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Prize for First Fiction

One of Newsweek's Top 100 Books in 2011

A 2011 Boston Globe Book of the Year for Fiction

A 2011 Guardian Best Book of the Year for Fiction

Finalist for the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize

Listener Opinions

by Magda | 10/31/2011

" I didn't like it. I expected more, having read the reviews. It's a pitty cause it has a nice idea, and some art references quite interesting. But that kind of everyday language with a smarty kind of way and a lack of a convincing plot is NOT my style. What a pitty...
"

by Caroline | 9/9/2011

" Madrid, weirdly, is exactly like this. Even if you're not on tranquilizers.
"

by Joe | 8/5/2011

" This little book is filled with moments of excellence. This novel will take its rightful place next to Lerner's three poetry collections whose words and phrases haunt me daily.
"

by Caitlin | 7/27/2011

" I won this book in a good reads contest. I'm really looking forward to reading this book.
"

About the Author

Ben
Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas. He is the author of three books of poetry The
Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path. He has
been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book
Award, a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, and the recipient of a 2010–2011 Howard
Foundation Fellowship. In 2011 he became the first American to win the Preis
der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie.

[ShoppingCartItemsAddedOnMerge] audiobook(s) were left in your cart from a previous visit, and saved to your account for your convenience. You may view or remove these audiobooks on the shopping cart page.